Diabetic Osmosis!

Something a little strange occured during the London Meet. My blood sugar levels are normally very good, and practically always within range, but on Saturday they were almost invariably high – sometimes even double what I might have normally expected! My only conclusion is that, like fertile women who live together and whose cycles become attuned, my blood sugar levels were equalising with the other diabetics sat around me. The closer they were, the greater the effect. On one occasion when I checked I was 13.9 mmol/l – almost unheard of for me! – the two people sat at either side of me had levels of 20 mmol/l and 26 mmol/l, also higher than they expected. Gradually, as I travelled home my levels began to fall back to more normal levels, and had fully settled in range before bed after I had been alone for a few hours!

Beware the Dark Side, should you meet
With diabetics on the street,
For there’s something, although it’s rare,
Of which you may not be aware!

When diabetics form a group,
Like poultry in a chicken coop,
The sugar in their blood may rise,
So please be warned and worldly-wise!

Should one Type 1 with good control
Be subject to more millimoles,
It seems there’s only one prognosis –
Proximity Diabetic Osmosis!

The sugar seeps from every pore –
Some may get less, some may get more,
But in this diabetic bubble
Meter readings often double!

This all-pervading, unseen force
Will start to fade with time of course,
It’s temporary, so please don’t fear
If diabetics stand too near!

The Carrot and the Stick

Some people have recently said on the forum how being told the bare, unpalatable truth about the consequences of poor blood sugar control has really made them sit up and start getting serious about their diabetes. If you let your guard slip then terrible things can creep up on you before you know it. So, sometimes tough love can be what is needed should complacency or rebellion set in. On the other hand, a person might find that encouragement is the key to success, possibly by being given the opportunity to get funding for an insulin pump with all the wonderful flexibility and enhanced control that brings. I feel that, currently, I am driven to keep good control mainly due to the fear of complications. This is not to say that I am in constant dread, but that I have an incentive to do everything by the book to give myself the best chance.

Diabetes nurses, so pleased you could attend,
Your patients will be glad you came – on you they all depend!
Today we’ll learn a technique called the carrot and the stick,
If carrots do not work for you, then the stick might do the trick!

Now, if a patient comes to you and their levels have been poor,
You might suggest a pump for them, describing its allure,
But sometimes a really harsh approach is the one that you should pick –
Frighten them with neuropathy and beat them with that stick!

They must avoid complacency, so keep them on their toes!
A pump might be a carrot dangled right before their nose,
And if you get their hopes up that a pump may soon be theirs,
You’ll be their favourite DSN – a nurse that really cares!

Assess your patient carefully, decide which method’s best,
But make sure that they know that they must inject, record and test,
For minor inconvenience they’ve everything to gain,
Avoiding complications and a life that’s filled with pain.

Given the choice...

Diabetes is one of those hidden conditions, at least so long as the potential complications are held at bay. People wouldn’t know you had it most of the time, unless maybe they were to see you testing your blood or injecting insulin. I’m quite fit and healthy overall, so sometimes it’s hard to believe that there’s anything wrong with me at all. But, several times a day I am reminded about it, when I have to test, plan a meal, decide what I can and can’t eat, calculate insulin doses, plan exercise, evenings out, days away – the list goes on. It’s a chronic condition and you cannot escape from it. Ignoring it will most likely result in feeling very bad and even possibly becoming very ill.

There’s nothing to stop me having all the things mentioned in today’s poem, except that it would be an absolute nightmare trying to keep my blood sugar levels anywhere near to normal range, so I wouldn’t enjoy it. I’ve been trying to pluck up courage to eat a pizza that I’ve had in my freezer for a month now, but every time I take the packet out and read the ingredients list, I’m put off – 150 grams of carbohydrate and 45 grams of fat. It just doesn’t seem worth it. My habits have changed quite a lot over the past year and I feel that maybe I’ve become a little obsessed with keeping my insulin doses as small as possible. I think, subconsciously, I think that the lower the doses go, the less diabetic I am, which is nonsense of course. So I just have to get on with it, like millions of others, until the Cure arrives!

No diabetes – let’s see what that means,
A big slab of butter, some bread and some beans,
A huge stuffed crust pizza – pepperoni and cheese,
Sausages and burgers, as much as you please,
Chocolate cake, biscuits, and puddings galore,
A whole box of jaffa cakes – perhaps even more!
Pineapple fritters fried deep in a pan,
With a mountain of chips, all part of the plan!
A gallon of fruit juice, or as much as you like,
Without any danger of a blood sugar spike!
I’m not saying I’d eat all these things if I could,
But a choice in the matter? Now that would be good!

The Diabetes Fairy

There has always been a lot of superstition connected to strange, unaccountable events, and diabetes is a condition that lends itself particularly well to this – our nemesis is the Diabetes Fairy! Not necessarily a malevolent force, but mischievous certainly, and always ready to throw some utterly unexpected and unexplainable blood sugar reading at you just when you think you’ve got everything worked out. You may have been eating the same food for breakfast for six months, with highly predictable consequences for your blood sugar, then suddenly one day you find you have shot up into the teens or twenties! Or conversely, you might have taken into account the carbohydrate content of your food, the time of day, the insulin taken, activity levels, the temperature, and all the other myriad factors that you have learned through long months of trial and error – but suddenly your blood sugar takes a downward dive towards zero that no amount of sugar, it seems, will raise! These, then, are the spells of the Diabetes Fairy. We don’t want to upset her, but she sometimes gets bored with our perfect control and plays a little trick for her amusement, and our bemusement…

There’s nothing so contrary as the Diabetes Fairy,
She’s as fickle as a cloud up in the sky.
You’d be warned to be quite wary, for her magic can be scary,
And you can’t escape, however hard you try!

There’s one special spell she’ll cast that makes your levels fall so fast
That no jelly baby feast can overcome,
When you think you’ve breathed your last, and your time on Earth is past,
Then she’ll spike you like a bear just bit your bum!

You may think she’ll pass you by if your food is low GI,
But she likes to cause confusion when she can.
Insidious and sly, with no earthly reason why,
She’ll confound the plans of diabetic Man!

You'll usually find she is courteous and kind,
But be careful when she spreads her magic dust –
It may catch you from behind and play ping pong with your mind,
Just at the point you think you’ve got it sussed!